Dreaming Against the Machine

Shannon Vallor, philosopher of technology and ethicist who wrote The AI Mirror, sketches how our metaphors shape AI thinking. She talks about AI as mirror, prosthetic, and accelerant. They critique Silicon Valley culture and libertarian tech myths. They also weigh narrow ML’s promise for public goods and the role of history in smarter AI policy.

Dave Karpf, a political scientist and critic of tech futurism, skews bad futurist books and the elites who love them. They roast nanotech fantasies, frontier nostalgia for Mars and underwater cities, and the myth that regulation stalled progress. The conversation weighs pragmatic state-led research and worries about who benefits from abundance-minded politics.

Kim Stanley Robinson, acclaimed author of the Mars Trilogy and The Ministry for the Future, reflects on science fiction’s role in imagining plausible futures. He contrasts SF’s reflection of the present with its futures, critiques billionaire misreadings of the genre, examines Mars hazards versus reality, and discusses political courage, climate optimism, and strategies for systemic change.

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, physicist and author bridging cosmology and social justice, chats about Star Trek as a hopeful allegory. They reminisce fandom origins and conventions. They debate personhood through Data, race and species tropes, and labor and union themes in space narratives. They push back on reactionary uses of sci fi and celebrate community, art, and rebuilding futures.

Welcome to our debut show! This week, Adam talks with Reo Eveleth, journalist and podcaster, about who gets to imagine the future, the power that comes with that role, and why certain visions of the future have endured in American culture. They also discuss problematic faves, radical almanacs, a hundred years of horrifying manifestos, and the virtues of being cheesy.Messages:  • Support the show at patreon.com/DreamingAgainstTheMachine  • Follow us on Bluesky and Instagram  • Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts!About the show:Dreaming Against the Machine is a podcast about envisioning a realistic and hopeful future. Each week, the show’s host, journalist and astrophysicist Dr. Adam Becker, will have an earnest (and entertaining!) conversation with a guest about possible futures, seen through the lenses of history, science, and culture. In a world where tech oligarchs and their power fantasies are driving visions of the future, Dreaming Against the Machine aims to take back the terms of the public conversation about what our world can and should be.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What would a good future look like? In this solo preview of the show, journalist and astrophysicist Adam Becker explains his struggles with this question, and how that led him to start this podcast. Along the way, he talks about the psychic toll of writing about terrible people, George Orwell, and the power of touching grass.Messages:  • Support the show at patreon.com/DreamingAgainstTheMachine  • Follow us on Bluesky and Instagram  • Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts!About the show:Dreaming Against the Machine is a podcast about envisioning a realistic and hopeful future. Each week, the show’s host, journalist and astrophysicist Dr. Adam Becker, will have an earnest (and entertaining!) conversation with a guest about possible futures, seen through the lenses of history, science, and culture. In a world where tech oligarchs and their power fantasies are driving visions of the future, Dreaming Against the Machine aims to take back the terms of the public conversation about what our world can and should be.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What might a good future look like? Explore ideas about how to envision better, realistic, equitable futures with astrophysicist and journalist Dr. Adam Becker. Each week, Adam and a new guest will try to find hope in the darkness of the current political moment through earnest (and entertaining!) conversations about what such a future might look like. In a world where tech oligarchs and their power fantasies are driving visions of the future, Dreaming Against the Machine aims to take back the public conversation about what our world can and should be.Episodes will come out weekly starting April 14, 2026.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.